The Internet is being used more and more by businesses, organizations, and institutions to provide web sites that allow interested parties to purchase goods and/or to participate in services remotely. In fact, the entire process of purchasing goods and selecting services is completed using a personal computer or other computing device that is connected to a communication network, such as the Internet.
Typically, web sites provide electronic documents, such as electronic forms (“forms”), that allow a user to view products or services and to select and/or designate products or services for purchase. Such forms are commonly defined using a hypertext markup language (“HTML”), which has been developed for desktop computers and fast and stable wired networks and/or for wireless computing devices connected to a wired network. Web browsing applications that are executable on desktop computers typically support extended HTML features, such as frames, cascading style sheets (“CSS”), and active content, such as, for example, JavaScript® or Java®, as well as other proprietary extensions.
HTML includes various input elements that are used to define entry fields in a form, such as a data input field. Each of the various input elements is assigned a name attribute to distinguish it from another input element. The user inputs data into the input fields of the form or changes data displayed in the input fields of the form. The input values are “submitted” to a Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”) associated with the web site. The data routed to the URL consists of name/value pairs such that the name of each input element is used to identify the values entered in the corresponding input field of the form.
The data displayed in the input fields on some forms is hard coded into the HTML. Such forms are often referred to as “static” because they have a fixed layout that includes fields, text and graphics. In contrast, “dynamic” forms retrieve data from an external data source, such as a relational database or an eXtensible Markup Language (“XML”) file that is called by the HTML, and the user can change the appearance of “dynamic” forms. Unfortunately, however, when a form is created using an eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transform (XSLT) using data from an XML file as the external data source, the user cannot update/save data modifications to external data source from which the original data was retrieved.